Search: Reinstate source selection

[DavisNT]

Iris version

3.67.0

Operating system(s) affected

• [X] Windows
• [ ] MacOS
• [ ] iOS
• [X] Android
• [ ] Linux
• [ ] Other

Browser(s) affected

• [ ] Firefox
• [X] Chrome
• [X] Edge
• [ ] Other

What happened?

In the Search screen (URL: /iris/search) the Sources button is not shown. Searching always happens in all sources. The sources selection is a very handy feature to refine search results.

Logs

No response

[cpt1gl0]

I am encountering the same issue.

[jaedb]

This is the result of some simplification of how the search functionality works. Essentially the intent is to put as much of the search state into the URL so back-navigation (and shortcuts) can more easily restore a previous search.

I understand the use case to filter each search by its sources, but I'm tending towards a global set of search providers. You could pick-and-mix which of your providers are used when searching under Settings but it wouldn't be selectable per search term.

[kingosticks]

I find selecting the provider on a per-search basis extremely useful but I think it really depends on what backends you regularly use. For example, the YouTube backend has stuff that's not available on Spotify (or similar) so sometimes it's your only choice when searching, but most of the time the search results are awful and you want everything except YouTube selected. Having to jump in and out of settings each time to make this change is awkward. I appreciate you have to draw the line somewhere but if others have the same use case, could you reconsider including it in the state?

[DavisNT]

@jaedb I completely agree with @kingosticks that in many use cases ability to select search providers is crucial. In my case Spotify is the main source and Soundcloud is something I use sometimes. I assume there are many more users with similar setup that mine and @kingosticks's. Currently I have reverted to using Iris version 3.66.1.

Could it be possible to include the search sources (e.g. abbreviated to a few letters or as numeric flags) in the search URL and make the source selection available again?

[curiousercreative]

You could pick-and-mix which of your providers are used when searching under Settings but it wouldn't be selectable per search term.

@jaedb is this a proposed feature? I don't see anything in settings about toggling which providers (backends) should be searched.

[curiousercreative]

Am I the only one that struggles with the relevancy of search results even with a single backend/provider enabled? I posted here about it, but I bet with better search results relevancy we'd have less need to filter by provider.

[orontee]

From my pov selection of backends before the search is done is non-sense.

Why not search every backend but allow users to filter out search results according to their source? And memorise the user choice for later searches.

[kingosticks]

So ask the sever to search everything (slower) and do client-side filtering of everything. That's twice the work for the same result. I don't see the advantage in this approach.

That aside, the real-world problem with this approach is some backends are very slow to provide their search results (through no fault of their own). With your suggestion, you waste that time on every search for no reason.

[orontee]

I thought backends were requested one at a time and asynchronously, and search results updated when a request for a peculiar backend ends.

Do we expect end user to have knowledge on which backend is slow so they stop using them?

[kingosticks]

That's not how Mopidy's search results work. Anything that Iris is requesting separately from elsewhere might work like that, I don't know.

No, we don't expect that. But it should remain possible to experiment and work it out.

[andy-lang]

I would definitely support being able to select search backends on an opt-in/opt-out basis. I use Bandcamp, Tidal, and Local as providers. If I search with all three, Bandcamp tends to be the fastest, but also returns a heap of unrelated results that I don't care about; but it's really useful as a backup if the music I'm looking for isn't available on Local or Tidal. As it stands, my Local results tend to get buried in the noise of Bandcamp and Tidal results, even though my Local collection is my preferred source.

So at the very least I would appreciate being able to choose the priority of results - e.g. show me all my Local results as highest priority, then Tidal, then Bandcamp as a last resort.

[jaedb]

Released since 3.69.0

[PureTryOut]

Eh this doesn't seem to work. The menu is there again but clicking any entry in it makes it show a white page (with sidebar and player controls though). This is with 3.69.2.

[jaedb]

🤔 right you are! Bugfix release coming out shortly.

[DavisNT]

@jaedb Could it be possible to persist the selected search sources on the client (i.e. when the search will be opened from the menu it would have selected the same sources that were used in previous search)?

[bendschs]

@jaedb Could it be possible to persist the selected search sources on the client (i.e. when the search will be opened from the menu it would have selected the same sources that were used in previous search)?

it used to be like thatin earlier versions, in 3.69.3 all sources are preselected by default when navigating to the search page. would be very useful to make source selection persistent again.

cheers bendsch